sonnen and Mandalay Homes have been jointly selected as a 2018 recipient of a HIVE (Housing Innovation, Vision and Economics) 50 Award, a top industry distinction that honors the people, products and processes that are leading the charge to inspire creativity, improve performance and explore better ways to build. Mandalay Homes, an innovator in transformative, energy-efficient home design, was chosen for its industry-changing approach to energy management using the sonnen smart energy storage system and incorporating the revolutionary sonnenCommunity concept in its master-planned development.

The 2018 HIVE Awards were presented at the third-annual HIVE Conference in Austin, Texas on November 28-29. Presented by Hanley Wood LLC, a real estate media firm which focuses on commercial and residential construction in North America, the conference brings together the building industry's brightest minds to explore the latest advances in building design, strategy and profitability. HIVE 50 Award recipients are chosen by a panel of distinguished judges following a thorough review of industry achievements throughout the year.

"The innovations and technologies we honor with the HIVE 50 represent the absolute best of what the housing industry has to offer," said Peter Goldstone, CEO of Hanley Wood. "These products are the systems and solutions that allow optimal performance in the structures we build - key advances in building technology that will translate into increased efficiency and responsiveness to reinvent the places we call home."

This year's list of HIVE 50 honorees represent five distinct categories: building technology, capital, design, intel and strategy. sonnen and Mandalay Homes Energy Storage and sonnenCommunity technology was selected as a winner in the building technology category.

Mandalay Homes became a true innovator in homebuilding by including solar plus the industry-leading sonnen intelligent energy management system in its Discovery home to optimize the use of energy for homeowners and contribute to the modernization of the local utility grid. Through a partnership with sonnen, the concept became standard in the 2,900-home Jasper master-planned community in Prescott Valley, Arizona, which was announced in October 2017. Homes in the Jasper development are capable of communicating with each other to form a hive of systems, branded as a sonnenCommunity. This intelligent network of collaborative clean energy storage systems forms a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) with the ability to dynamically interact with the precise needs of the electricity grid on a day-by-day basis to increase grid efficiency and lower operating costs.

Additionally, the network of residential clean energy power plants will create a far more resilient electricity grid, largely immune to power outages, by relying on thousands of distributed energy resources as opposed to a handful of central power plants. The Jasper sonnenCommunity represents a significant innovation in how new homes can contribute to the decarbonization of our electricity grid.

"The sonnen team is thrilled to be recognized as one of this year's HIVE 50 Award recipients, with our partner Mandalay Homes," said Blake Richetta, sonnen Senior Vice President and head of the U.S. subsidiary. "We are proud to be involved in such a groundbreaking project, one which set a new standard for energy-efficient communities in the U.S. and has continued to challenge the status-quo of the larger electricity grid."

"Our goal at Mandalay Homes has always been to create projects and developments which inspire other homebuilders to think outside the box and explore new ways to create the home of the future," said Dave Everson, CEO and Founder of Mandalay Homes, "Our partnership with sonnen and the creation of the Jasper community is just one example of this ideology being put into action and we are honored that the industry took note of this by naming the project a HIVE 50 Award winner."

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